The stench of seared flesh filled my nose, along with noxious clouds of smoke. I coughed and shoved the burned body off me. The rifle still in my hand, I staggered to my feet and risked a glance through the trees. I didn't see any more men chasing me. They were probably busy putting out the fire I'd started. No, this time, Grimes and
Hazel themselves were hunting me.
Grimes was carrying a rifle, which he raised to his shoulder and pointed in my direction. But I wasn't as concerned about him as I was about Hazel, who gave me a cruel grin even as more elemental Fire flashed to life in her hand. I could dodge bullets a lot longer than I could dodge magic.
Even as Hazel reared back her hand to throw her power at me, I fired off a few haphazard shots with my own rifle, then turned and started to run once more.
WHOOSH!
The Fire slammed into the spot where I'd been standing, and the heat from the blast nipped at my heels like a pack of hungry wolves, even though I was ten feet away and moving fast. Hazel wasn't holding back. She didn't want to take me back to camp alive. She just wanted me dead.
The feeling was mutual.
But with my magic still so low, there was no way that I could go toe-to-toe with her. And with Grimes by her side, I couldn't hope to hide in the woods, sneak up, and shoot her in the back either. That meant running away and coming back to fight another day. I wasn't ashamed by my retreat, though. I'd gotten Sophia away from here, so I'd kept that promise to Jo-Jo. Now I just needed to find a way to keep the one that I'd made to Owen to live through this.
So I ran and ran through the woods as ball after ball of elemental Fire tore through the trees, bushes, and rocks all around me. If Hazel wasn't careful, she was going to set the whole mountain ablaze with her magic. Or maybe that's what she wanted, for me to get trapped in the middle of a raging forest fire. Dead was dead, after all. I didn't think that Hazel would be too picky about how she accomplished my demise.
Either way, there was nothing that I could do but keep running. I needed to put as much distance between them and me as fast as I could, so I didn't have time to be cautious, slow down, and look for traps, not if I didn't want Hazel to roast me where I stood. So I had to hope that I wouldn't put my foot down in a snare, tug loose a bit of fishing line, or stumble into one of the stake-filled pits.
For once, my luck held, and I didn't encounter any more traps, but I still wasn't going to be able to escape Grimes and Hazel.
The fight at the salon, rushing Jo-Jo over to cooper's, climbing up the mountain with Owen and Warren, killing the guards at the pit, using my Ice magic to freeze the rocks on the ridge, fighting Grimes's men, feeling his and Hazel's Fire slamming into my body. All of that had chipped away at me.
It was one thing to be without magic, but even more troubling was the loose, rubbery feeling in my legs, the sweat streaming down my face, and the constant stitch in my side as I tried to suck down enough of the hot, humid summer air to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
I was about to turn and try to make some sort of desperate stand against Grimes and Hazel when I spotted a wide opening in the trees up ahead. I'd long ago lost track of where I was on the mountain, but maybe I'd managed to stumble onto some sort of forest service access road.
There might even be an ATV nearby that I could flag down or hotwire, if it came to that - As I burst out of the trees, I immediately had to put on the brakes. The opening before me wasn't a road. It was a cliff.
I skidded to a stop just in time to keep myself from plunging over the edge. I stared down, and I remembered something important from Fletcher's maps that I'd forgotten: the river flowed through Bone Mountain.
The Aneirin River twisted and turned through Ashland and the Appalachian Mountains that ran around and through the city. I didn't know if this was the river itself or one of the many mountain streams that fed into it. Although stream was a bit of an understatement, given that the water was at least thirty feet wide and white and frothy with rapids.
Oh, yes, I remembered seeing the river on Fletcher's maps of the mountain. I just had no idea that I was this close to it - and no idea how to get across it.
Because this wasn't any old ridge that I was standing on top of; it was a bona fide cliff, with a sheer, vertical, three-hundred-foot drop to the water below. Not exactly your usual summer swan dive. Still, I might have considered it if I hadn't been so low on my magic. But I couldn't risk it. Not now. I'd have to find some other way off the mountain - Crack!
While I'd been gaping at the rapids below, Grimes and Hazel had closed the distance between us. The first shot clipped the back of my left shoulder and spun me all the way around.
Crack! Crack!
The next two bullets thunked into the front of my vest, making me stagger back.
One of my feet slipped off the rocks, and I had to windmill my arms back and forth to keep from teetering the rest of the way over the side. Finally, I managed to catch my balance and stumble away from the edge, although I probably shouldn't have bothered, since Grimes and Hazel slowly approached me. He was still holding his rifle, while yet another ball of elemental Fire flickered in her hand. There was no way I could get a shot off with my own rifle without both of them unloading on me first.
"Well, well, well," Grimes crowed in a triumphant voice. "It looks like we've cornered us a pesky little varmint."
Instead of responding, I glanced over my shoulder at the rocks and rapids in the canyon below.
"Oh, now, don't be like that, Ms. Blanco," Grimes said, picking up on my train of thought. "We hunted you down fair and square. The least you can do is come on back to camp with us and hold up your end of the bargain."
"Why?" I snarled. "So I can be raped, tortured, and murdered?"
"Of course," Hazel chimed in. "That's your punishment for all the bad things that you've done. Besides, you jump, you die. Simple as that."
"I go back with you, I die anyway," I countered.
Grimes shrugged. "Not right away. Who knows? You might be able to escape . . . eventually."
It was probably the same line he used whenever he cornered someone in the woods like this.
Oh, come on back to camp,
I could just hear him saying in that soft, syrupy, twangy drawl of his.
It's better than dying out here in the middle of the woods. Who knows? You just might live through this, after all.
But it was nothing but a damn, dirty lie. It had been a lie for all the people before me, and it would be for me too. Because Grimes and Hazel didn't have any intention of letting me live. No, I'd entertain them and their boys for a few days - if that long - and then they'd dispose of me in the pit, along with all the others.